Easily install open source software with MacPorts

MacPorts, formerly DarwinPorts, is a free opensource app that allows Mac users to easily install command line software in Mac OS X. If this sounds to you like Fink, well, you’d be right because it’s pretty close. Functionality is much the same, but some people swear that MacPorts (or Fink) is better than the other. MacPorts is probably best for more advanced Mac users who have some experience with the command line, because MacPorts itself is also a command line tool.

After you install MacPorts, using it is pretty easy, you can search for, update, and install software with just a few commands.

If you would prefer to use a GUI to install command line software, try out Fink Commander, which performs much the same as MacPorts but through a GUI interface. There are several GUI options available for MacPorts but most of them are shareware or commercial, and why pay for something that is free?

9 Comments

When I was trying out Fink, I decided to install Subversion as first thing.

I quickly found out the most recent svn binary package is at version 1.2 (well, a BIT outdated), so I decided to go with building most recent ver from source and I ended on building whole Apache 2 with whole subset of not really neccesary libraries.

When I was trying to build some other console app (don’t remeber what exactly right now), Fink asked me for confirmation to build xorg from sources.

I said “NO!” and currently I am completely happy with MacPorts. Maybe selection of packages is not so huge as in Fink, but quality is definitely better.

I’m having a bit of trouble trying to install fink, I know how to execute the command lines but I can’t even get it to install, OK I get this problem when I trying to install

I typed in Terminal; “./bootstrap” I pick Option 1 from the list then Option 1 again to install the 32-bit(Default) I then enter my pass from sudo command, then comes this

Choose a mode: [1] 2
Checking package… looks good (fink-0.29.10).
Checking system… i386-apple-darwin10.2.0
This system was not released at the time this Fink release was made.
Prerelease versions of Mac OS X might work with Fink, but there are no
guarantees.
Distribution: 10.6
Architecture: x86_64
Checking cc… not found.
ERROR: There is no C compiler on your system. Make sure that the Developer
Tools are installed.

it tells me there’s no C compiler on my system, but I’ve already downloaded them before because I have Xcode 3.2.1 installed along with the other stuff that came with the Developer Tools. Do I have to re-download it to make it work or do I have to find a C compiler to make this work?